"Well, I'm afraid it isn't a talent for cooking. Luella has a couple of boarders; a Mrs. Lindsay and her daughter from New York. Fortunately, they have a sense of humor. It's quite necessary that Luella's boarders should have a sense of humor. Mrs. Lindsay walked with us to the gate when we came away and told us some of their trials; but she is one of those efficient women who are capable of managing, and she and her daughter have funny times. It seems that Miss Lindsay has just been enjoying her first winter in society and has overdone it so greatly that the doctor ordered a dry-land sea voyage, like this, in an uninhabited spot like this, and told her to live the life of a vegetable. Mrs. Lindsay is one of these thin, snappy women, strung on wires, and I judge nervous to a degree. She has a busy time trying to dominate the circumstances. She says if they only were vegetables and didn't have to eat, or to care whether their rooms were swept, it would all be quite simple. The daughter is rather skin-and-bone-y too; but she's the sort who would look smart even in bed. You can see that she is a New Yorker of the New Yorkers." "Oh, why did you visit them, dear Mrs. Porter! You want to get away from people too, don't you?" "No danger, I fancy, of their troubling us. Vegetables don't return calls. Mrs. Lindsay was very much interested, though, in knowing that you were here. She and her husband dined with your father last June, and they are related distantly to that friend of yours--Mr. Whitcomb." "Fred?" "Yes; Mrs. Lindsay said he had told them a great deal about you. Isn't the world small!" "Too small," sighed Linda. "I hope they'll not try to see me." "Miss Lindsay was quite lackadaisical and seemed to have no interest beyond her hammock; and I can easily defend you from the mother," said Mrs. Porter reassuringly. That evening Linda received a letter from her sister. _Dear, dear Linda_ (it began)--